168 OUR HUMBLE HELPERS 



places. But there came a day when those wild re- 

 treats were found insufficient, and human ingenuity 

 made its first attempts in the art of building. To 

 provide oneself with a shelter was not enough; it 

 was necessary above all to maintain an unremitting 

 state of defense. The forests were overrun with for- 

 midable animals, and there was perpetual warfare 

 between neighboring tribes. As a safeguard against 

 surprise, wherever there were lakes, the houses 

 were built on piling in the middle of the water. 



"It must have taken a prodigious expenditure of 

 energy for man, as yet so poorly provided with tools, 

 to build these lake villages, or lacustrine villages, as 

 they are called. With a stone ax the tree that was 

 to be felled was laboriously girdled at the base, and 

 then the application of fire completed the process. 

 Whole days and perhaps the united efforts of a num- 

 ber of workers were necessary to obtain one joist 

 such as a wood-cutter would now turn out with a 

 few strokes of his steel ax. But with their tools of 

 flint, hardly hitting the wood and falling to pieces 

 with the slightest maladroit blow, it was an enormous 

 undertaking for them. They were in about the same 

 plight that our carpenters would be in if the latter 

 were obliged to cut down and trim an oak with noth- 

 ing but an old rusty knife. I leave you to imagine, 

 then, the labor and patience expended in obtaining 

 the thousands of joists needed in this piling. Ap- 

 parently each head of a family furnished one as his 

 share, which gave him the right to erect his hut on 

 the common building-lot. At a later period, per- 



